The Party Girl's Invitation (6 page)

“Oh, ah?” Maude replied, as she sat down next to him and opened a packet of cheese and onion crisps, deftly removing the top of her sandwich to insert a few of the crisps in on top of the pickle and the cheddar, fitting the lid back on and squashing the whole lot down, to crush the crisps.“What did he have to say for himself then, he back at work yet?”

“Said his back’s better.” Bernard took another mouthful of his sandwich. “He reckons that blonde bit of stuff I saw up at the factory, cosying up with the boss on Friday, could have been Hetty’s granddaughter. She’s back from the States, so he said. Gave her a lift in his cab on Saturday, so he reckons.”

Maude rearranged the crisps in her sandwich. “That would be young Crystal, then. I thought she had some fella out there in America, what’s happened to him then, did she bring him back here with her?”

“I didn’t ask. From the view I got of her the other night, I wouldn’a thought it, if it was her of course. The boss pulled y’on missy right up close he did, when he thought I was out of sight. He’s not one to let the grass grow under his feet, that’s for sure and she weren’t complainin’ none, I can tell ya. I reckon there was a few sparks flyin’ there, if you get my drift.”

Maude raised her eyebrows. “That’ll not please madam. She’s had a bee in her bonnet about him up at the factory ever since he first arrived. Had a dinner party on Saturday night, Hetty did, and didn’t invite him you know, so Maisie says. I bet it were Crystal alright. Maisie said she’s come home. Gone all blonde and tarty, Maisie says.”She thought for a moment, “Though Maisie’s got no clothes sense anyhow, so I don’t know how she’d know anything about it, and Crystal were always a blondie child, right from a baby, if you recall?”

“Oh ah, that she were. Bob brought her home from the station, Saturday, she’d been down Bath shoppin’. She couldn’t have brought much stuff with her on the plane, cos he said she came back with bags full of clothes. Dresses and such like, he recognised some of the names, right fancy stuff.”He paused, and squinted out of the window. “Eh-up, looks like that’s her comin’ along the road now. How do these youngsters walk in those heels, eh? She’ll give herself bunions before she’s fifty, I’ll bet. I wonder where she’d be goin’ now then?”

Maude sniffed, “How would I know? I heard that she was up at the churchyard yesterday, paying her respects to her parents, according to the vicar. She won’t need many of those party dresses around here though, there’s ’owt to do here of an evening, a pair of wellies would be more sense, if you ask me. There’s the Hunt Ball coming up, if Lolly ever gets around to fixing things. Maybe Crystal’ll take that over for her, she were a fancy event organiser, weren’t she? It might get set up proper then, if she does. Last year were a right fiasco. The pig were cold and the drinks hot. Old Major ‘huff ‘n’ puff’, got right cross with Lolly and she blamed Hetty, do you remember?”

“That was the only highlight of the evening. Oh, apart from young Jeremy throwing up in the fountain, of course. Hetty was seriously cross with him. I overheard him tellin’ a few of the lads in the canteen about it after, he thought it was a real joke.”

Maude laughed. “Mark and Ruth hadn’t been married long, I bet that were a real eye-opener for Ruth, she was brought up proper like, a real lady was her mum. Bet she wondered what she’d let herself in for, taking on that lot. Now Crystal’s back, things will liven up around here for sure, she always brought out the worst in Jeremy. The terrible twins we used to call ’em, do you remember?”

Bernard went back to chewing on his sandwich. “I bet we don’t know the half of it, love, either.”

Maude smiled, fondly. “What a pair,” she said. “Now, hurry up, finish that off, there’s cake for afters. You don’t want to be late back for work now, do you? That Mister Silver doesn’t strike me as a man who will take much messing about. They reckon he’s a real taskmaster.”

“He won’t bother me too much, just so long as I do my job. I got brownie points on Friday night for turning up quickly when he called. I’d already de-activated the alarm on the front door before he got there, made me’self look good, that did.”

“You’re a good man, Bernard. He’s lucky to have you.”

Bernard smiled and scratched his belly through his shirt.“I do me best, dear, I do me best.”

Cousin Lolly looked older and slimmer, a bit more sleek than Crystal remembered. She’d always been the tubby one in their family, dark haired and doe eyed and usually dressed in jodhpurs or last year’s cords, she’d never had much of an eye for style. She’d been a placid and peaceful child, if a little on the slow side. She’d taken the blame many a time for Crystal or Jeremy and their childhood capers.

Looking at her now though, as they sat in the ‘Dog and Duck’ with a glass of chilled champagne each and lunch for Crystal, she had polished up well, Crystal decided. Several pounds lighter, with her teeth fixed and her hair coloured she had got herself a new man and a new life. She’d looked with horror at the selection of crisps, sandwiches and pickles that Crystal had ordered and insisted that Reginald liked her slim, so she’d pass on lunch, for now.

Her Reginald worked in London, most of the time, she said. They had only been dating for a few weeks, he was a very busy man. He was taking her to a posh corporate ‘do’ in London tonight and then the opera at the weekend, he was a man of culture. She’d invited him to meet her family at the Hunt Ball, since she’d not had chance to show him off yet, everyone was so busy these days. At the mention of the ball, Crystal took a deep breath. That was what they were here for, really, to discuss the arrangements and see what could be done to salvage the mess.

“So, how many tickets have we sold then, what kind of numbers am I up against?” she started as an opening gambit.

Lolly wriggled awkwardly in her seat and began to make pleats out of the folds of material in her skirt. “We sent out a hundred and fifty invitations, but mummy has been collating the responses, so I’m not quite sure how many people have taken us up on the offer. We raised the ticket price this year because we wanted some of the money raised to go to other charities too. I hope it hasn’t put people off,” she worried.“Mummy put the replies in a shoe box along with the egg money, but I’m afraid it has all got a bit mixed up. She was trying to sort it out for you last night.”She grimaced, “I’m not at all sure how far she got, to be honest, there was a whole stack of cash as well as cheques, so it was difficult to know which money was for which, if you know what I mean?”She looked hopefully at Crystal, as if she thought she might have the answer. “There must be a couple of thousand pounds there, we really should have banked it all by now, shouldn’t we?”

Crystal took a deep breath. “Hmm, yes, really we should. Right, so we don’t really know what our budget is, or how many numbers we are catering for then yet?”Crystal got out her notepad and began to write, in between nibbling crisps and picking at olives and tiny silverskin pickled onions in equal measures. She shoved the plate over towards Lolly, “Go on, help yourself, a few onions and some olives won’t do your diet any harm, you look half starved to me.”

Lolly recoiled in horror, “That’s the last thing I need. Reginald won’t find me in the least bit attractive if I turn up stinking of onions and picking bits of olive out from between my teeth, very fastidious, he is. No, I’ll pass, if you don’t mind.”She smoothed down her pure silk skirt, admiring the way that the material pearled in the soft glow from the overhead light, it had cost a small fortune, but had been well worth the expense. She had a real ‘boyfriend’ for the first time in years, and he was loaded too, she wasn’t going to risk losing him now.

Crystal watched the agitated gestures with cool detachment and wondered what her cousin was thinking. They had never been particularly close, but she’d learned to pick up on signs of nervousness or uncertainty whilst working in LA. There, she’d learned to be wary of neurotic people. Cities seemed to attract the paranoid, nervous and fretful souls, their behaviour often tragic, but you learned to cope and life was certainly diverse.

In comparison, Lolly had lived her entire life on the outskirts of Bath and had never left the sheltered confines of her family home. Crystal felt somewhat world-weary and jaded, when she considered alternatives. The only time they’d really got together in the past had been in the summer holidays and then Jeremy and Mark had been around too, they’d invariably managed to get Lolly into trouble, over some mis-deed or other. Still, family loyalty and all, gran had asked her to help, so she supposed she would do her best to extract Lolly from the mire. On reflection, it would make a change, her bailing Lolly out of trouble, perhaps she owed her this much. Showing remarkable restraint, she refrained from asking how the champagne thieves were doing, and focussed on the positives.

“So, we need to get the numbers from Aunt Vera then. How about the venue? At your place, dinner on the lawn and tent in the paddock?”

“Yes, we’ve had a lot of rain these past few weeks and the grass is really rather long, it will need cutting before we can put a marquee up. Old Farmer Brown used to lend us his tractor to mow the pasture, but he passed away last winter and his son has sold up, farm equipment and everything. I don’t know who to ask now.”

Crystal made more notes, ‘mow field’.

“So, to recap then,” she added, as she reviewed the rapidly lengthening list. “We don’t have a marquee, the field is overgrown, there are no glasses ordered and we have mistakenly ordered twice as many flowers as we need. The caterers have not been informed of numbers and the printers haven’t typeset the menus yet. Have we actually got anything in place? What about the band? We do have a band, don’t we?”

“I put the usual band on stand-by this year. The youngsters were asking for a disco last year, don’t you think that bands are a bit old and boring?”

Crystal’s eyebrows hit her hairline. With effort she retained her composure. “That depends on your audience really, Lolly. The last ball I organised here had a guest list with an average age of sixty, our regulars like the traditional big band sound. We need to tailor the music to the audience, Lolly.”

She sketched a hangman’s noose on the side of her writing pad, while she considered the options. “If we knew who had already bought tickets it might make it easier to decide what kind of entertainment to provide. One solution would be a disco later, when some of the ‘oldies’ have gone on to bed. It will increase costs though, and we’ve enough of those already.”She made a few more scribbles. “So it comes back to how many tickets have we sold and who is buying them really then, eh?”

“Oh, I’m so glad gran called you in to help, we got into a right mess last year. You were out in America, so you wouldn’t have heard too much about it, but there were lots of complaints afterwards, it was most unpleasant. Mummy ended up writing letters about it for weeks. In the end we made our own donation to charity and picked up the bill. Daddy can’t afford to do that this year though, farming isn’t paying as well as it used to. I might even have to get a job, though heaven knows what I might do.”

Or a rich husband, more likely, Crystal thought with uncharacteristic bluntness. Perhaps that was what was behind the sudden and dramatic change in appearance. “So, what do you do these days then, since you finished at Uni?” she asked.

“I do charity work, mostly. I did white water rafting last year, and raised money for Ethiopia. It’s not paid work though.”

Crystal thought hard for a moment. “You have a good knowledge of this area don’t you? Archaeological sites and stuff? Do you have any college contacts?”

Lolly looked confused. “Ye-es, I suppose I do, those that haven’t moved on, that is. Everyone has such different lives these days. Most are married or out at work, someplace or other. Of course, I help out on the farm too, when it gets busy, but it’s not the same. I can think of a few names, why, what do you need?”

“I’m not going back to London,” Crystal stated.“I’m thinking of setting up business here, aimed at the American tourist market, primarily. I have contacts back in the States, so it would be a new angle. I was thinking about it on my way down from London on the train. All those acres of countryside, small fields, pretty villages and the ubiquitous ‘cream tea’, it’s all very alluring to the American market. They are more used to miles of freeway and mass urban sprawls, depending on what part of the States you’re from, of course. Where I was in LA, they would find this all very ‘quaint’, especially our pubs and tea shops and heritage. I thought we could bring them in by train from London and then put them up in one of the nice hotels in Bath. If we offer a package, Stonehenge, Avebury, a few war memorials, ending up with the pump rooms and the Royal Crescent it would have universal appeal. We could make a few days of it, and offer a West End show on the last night, as an optional extra, finish the whole thing off with a bit of pazzaz. I need to do some market research before I put some proposals together and thought you might know a few hard up students who would be prepared to help me. There won’t be much cash in it, but I could call in a few favours and pay them in concert tickets.”She rattled off a list of top artists and bands due in at the capital over the next few months, some sold out weeks ago.

Lolly inspected her nails, looking downcast. “There are people around here who would do anything to get their hands on some of those tickets, we’re a bit out in the wilds here. It all sounds very glamorous. What I don’t understand is why you would give it all up, to return home here?”

Too many questions, Crystal thought. She really must remember to keep her mouth shut. “Homesick,” she replied brightly, “I just miss my roots,” she lied.